On Saturday November 24th, we went to Orrville, Ohio to see the W&LE Santa train that was put together by ORHS and W&LE. On our way to Orrville, we passed through Canton on US Route 30 and saw the end of an NS coaltrain heading west. We chased the coaltrain to Orrville and beat it there by about 3 minutes. After the coaltrain passed, we went over and took pictures of the W&LE Santa train. They were waiting on a westbound W&LE train out of Brewster to clear Orrville (we did not hear about the westbound until it passed Orrville). We made our way west to Creston to try and see the Santa train again, but they did not have time to go to Creston and be back in Orrville at noon, so they went back east to Orrville before they made it to Creston. After that, we caught a few CSX trains in Creston. We then went farther west to Greenwich to see several more CSX trains before it got too dark for pictures.

1) An NS coaltrain led by NS 9291 heads west through Orrville, Ohio on Saturday November 24th.

2) ORHS GP7u 471 on the west end of the Santa train.

3) The Santa train pulls away from the Orrville train station with W&LE 112 on the east end of the train.

Forever-Railfan-45 Wrote:
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> Your loaded coal train should be possibly one of
> the following; 576, 578, 688 or 776. Looks like
> PGNX hoppers which would indicate a 776.

Thanks Carl. The train was mostly made up of PGNX coalcars with a few CEFX cars.

Nice pix. The autorack train that came up from Crestline on the ex-NYC and took the SE transfer to head toward Akron was probably the Q296.

I would discourage you from referring to solid trains of autoracks as "unit trains", however. A unit train is one that remains intact from origin to destination, without any en-route switching, such as coal from a mine to a power plant. While that could occur in high-volume auto shipping corridors -- the notion of a trainload of vehicles running from an origin terminal near one or more assembly plants to an export dock comes to mind -- it is unlikely because most trains handle multiple blocks of cars that are set off or picked up at various terminals along the way.

toledopatch Wrote:
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> Nice pix. The autorack train that came up from
> Crestline on the ex-NYC and took the SE transfer
> to head toward Akron was probably the Q296.
>
> I would discourage you from referring to solid
> trains of autoracks as "unit trains", however. A
> unit train is one that remains intact from origin
> to destination, without any en-route switching,
> such as coal from a mine to a power plant. While
> that could occur in high-volume auto shipping
> corridors -- the notion of a trainload of vehicles
> running from an origin terminal near one or more
> assembly plants to an export dock comes to mind --
> it is unlikely because most trains handle multiple
> blocks of cars that are set off or picked up at
> various terminals along the way.

Thanks toledopatch. I defined 'unit train' as a train that consisted of only one type of car, but I now see my definition was wrong. Learn something new every day.